The Checkup: April 13, 2008 - April 19, 2008

Last month's worries about contaminated tap water and this week's concerns about bisphenol A (BPA) leaching out of the everyday plastic items we use have prompted understandable hand-wringing online. Are we being poisoned by our environment? Worse still, are we poisoning our babies? Thinking about those questions raised others: Isn't...

First a new report raises "some concern" about the safety of BPA, a chemical found in many plastic products, including food containers and baby bottles. Now new research might make you want to throw out your furniture, toss your shampoo and tear the insulation out of your walls. It's...

37,680 new cases a year. 34,290 deaths. Those are the grim statistics for pancreatic cancer, the fourth-leading cause of cancer death and one of the scariest diagnoses a person can get. Pancreatic cancer's been getting lots of press lately--little of it good--from accounts of the deaths of Luciano Pavarotti in...

Go figure. My article in today's Health section about my kids' apparent reluctance to follow my lead as I model behaviors (eating fruits and whole grains, exercising regularly, you name it) warrants an immediate follow-up. Even as I was typing away, putting the finishing touches on my story, subtle changes...

Ready to keep your kids home from school--perhaps for months? To forgo family outings to the zoo or playground? And to help them with schoolwork that comes to the house by e-mail? Don't dismiss those possibilities. It's pretty much a given that sooner or later the world will face another...